2006.08.10: August 10, 2006: Headlines: COS - Guatemala: Parks: Wildlife: Poaching: Stirling Echoes Sentine: Guatemala RPCV Steve Henry is deputy manager of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a corner of the world he calls a “natural oasis surrounded by a sea of humanity"

Guatemala RPCV Steve Henry is deputy manager of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a corner of the world he calls a “natural oasis surrounded by a sea of humanity"

“I worked for two years as the field manager of a biosphere reserve in Guatemala,” said Henry, where he lived in a tiny village on the edge of the rain forest and oversaw a team of park rangers and led reforestation and environmental education efforts. “We also patrolled poaching,” said Henry. “They had problems with the poaching of mountain lions, tapir and monkeys. People would also go into the reserve and illegally collect birds like macaws and parrots for the pet trade. Henry completed his assignment in Central America and returned to the United States, but not without maintaining contact with a Guatemalan woman named Mayra whom Henry later married. The couple has two sons. “When you experience something like the Peace Corps, you live in an unencumbered way. It’s very liberating." He said he and his wife sit on the back porch of their home on Pleasant Plains Road, Chatham, and they watch their sons play in the wilderness of the swamp and tell each other they can’t believe they’re in New Jersey.

Swamp’s new deputy manager returns to the inspiration where it all began

By Max Pizarro Staff Writer

08/10/2006

LONG HILL TWP. - Young Steve Henry first made contact with the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge on a school field trip years ago.

It was after that childhood sojourn especially that Henry, a the native of East Hanover, grew up conscious of the idea that a wild jungle was in his backyard.

Little did he know back then, that it was also in his career path. Today, Henry is deputy manager of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a corner of the world he calls a “natural oasis surrounded by a sea of humanity.”

As he looks back on his last 13 years with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Henry said it’s good to be back in Jersey, where his dedication to understanding and preserving the environment began; a dedication that led him to the rainforests of Guatemala, the desert country of Arizona and the Northern Great Plains of Montana – and back to the swamp finally.

“It’s a natural jewel,” Henry said of the 7,700-acre refuge that includes a portion of long Hill Township. “This place has always been about the natural world, but besides that, it’s been about neighbors supporting the refuge as part of a grassroots movement to protect this area from a jetport. The level of support the refuge receives, from top to bottom, from the halls of Congress to our neighbors is tremendous.”

Son of George and Ellen Henry of East Hanover, the budding biologist graduated from Hanover Park High School and attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where he received his undergraduate degree in biology.

He went to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., for his Master’s degree in wildlife ecology.

He would go into the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1993, but first came a tour of duty in the Peace Corps.

“I worked for two years as the field manager of a biosphere reserve in Guatemala,” said Henry, where he lived in a tiny village on the edge of the rain forest and oversaw a team of park rangers and led reforestation and environmental education efforts.

“We also patrolled poaching,” said Henry. “They had problems with the poaching of mountain lions, tapir and monkeys. People would also go into the reserve and illegally collect birds like macaws and parrots for the pet trade.”

Henry completed his assignment in Central America and returned to the United States, but not without maintaining contact with a Guatemalan woman named Mayra whom Henry later married. The couple has two sons.

When the Fish and Wildlife Service hired him he started out at a refuge in Arizona called Cabeza Prieta, a stretch of desert country on the Mexican border where there were more diamond back than Mojave rattlesnakes and far more Mojaves than people.

“I’d never been in a place that harsh and desolate,” Henry said of his Sonoran Desert assignment. “The nature of the habitat is very sparse. Of course, you don’t have the diversity of plants that you have here. The landscape is laid bare. It’s the most dangerous place. If you got out there and twisted an ankle or got a flat tire and you weren’t prepared, you could be dead in eight hours.”

Part of his job in Arizona included monitoring and helping the Sonoran pronghorn survive in a drought-ridden landscape - “especially dry,” Henry said, “over the last 15 years.” There is over-predation, too, by coyotes on pronghorn fawns, and habitat fragmentation.

“Historically these animals roamed hundreds of miles in any direction,” said the deputy manager. “Since the landscape has become more compartmentalized and fragmented, the animals can’t range as far and freely as they once did.”

After Arizona came Henry’s next and to this point, longest, assignment: eastern Montana, where he worked for almost ten years at the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge, a spread of 1.1 million acres on the northern Great Plains that includes a stretch of the Missouri River.

There he helped the black-footed ferret population maintain a toehold on life.

“They live in prairie dog towns,” he said. “But the number of prairie dogs has plummeted in recent times. There are only a small number of what they were 100 years ago. What we were doing was working on creating a self-sustaining ferret population in the refuge.”

The ferrets feed on prairie dogs. Because the prairie dogs are dwindling so are the ferrets. One species that has fared well at the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge has been elk, a herd of which at the refuge Henry calls “world class.”

“The herd,” he said, “is the result of a re-introduction in the 1950s. They were introduced on the refuge and their numbers have exploded. There are a couple of thousand elk in that herd.”

The Thread

Born in Essex, raised in Morris, Henry in his early forties has come home with his own family to face the particular challenges of the swamp as invasive species like knotweed, stiltgrass, multi-flora rose and phragmitis eat away at the indigenous features of the watershed. He can also look back now at the village in the jungle, and the small town in the plains.

“You wind up realizing how many things we have that we don’t need,” he said. “When you experience something like the Peace Corps, you live in an unencumbered way. It’s very liberating. Then moving from Guatemala to the rural west, to a very small town in rural Montana, you come to appreciate a slower pace of life, community, and the people who would go out of their way to give you the shirts off their backs. Friday nights can get a bit long, that’s true. They don’t have a lot of cultural events out there. But you make up for it in the social ways in which people interact. There was always something going on in the community – but it was local stuff.”

He said he and his wife sit on the back porch of their home on Pleasant Plains Road, Chatham, and they watch their sons play in the wilderness of the swamp and tell each other they can’t believe they’re in New Jersey.

“When I told people I wanted to come back here they said I was crazy,” said Henry. “Their attitude is that everything east of the Mississippi is sidewalks and strip malls. But the swamp has been a thread through my life. It’s where I’ve wanted to be for a long time.”

When this story was posted in August 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Peace Corps' Screening and Medical ClearanceThe purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process.

Gates charity races to spend billionsWarren E. Buffett’s gift of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation means that for tax reasons, starting in 2009, the foundation must distribute $3 billion annually, or a little more than twice what it distributed last year.

PCOL Comment: The Foundation says that "preventing the spread of HIV is the most durable long-term solution to the AIDS epidemic, and a top priority for the foundation." Peace Corps Volunteers and Returned Volunteers have been doing just that in AIDS Education for the past 15 years. Why not consider a $100M annual contribution to the Peace Corps to put 2,500 additional volunteers in the field to expand AIDS education worldwide?

PCOL Comment: Congratulations to the Bush administration for an inspired choice for Peace Corps Director. Ron Tschetter is not only an RPCV but was Chairman of the NPCA. Best wishes to Mr. Tschetter on his future tenure as Director of the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps is "fashionable" againThe LA Times says that "the Peace Corps is booming again and "It's hard to know exactly what's behind the resurgence." PCOL Comment: Since the founding of the Peace Corps 45 years ago, Americans have answered Kennedy's call: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Over 182,000 have served. Another 200,000 have applied and been unable to serve because of lack of Congressional funding. The Peace Corps has never gone out of fashion. It's Congress that hasn't been keeping pace.

Changing the Face of HungerIn his new book, Former Congressman Tony Hall (RPCV Thailand) says humanitarian aid is the most potent weapon the United States can deploy against terrorism. An evangelical Christian, he is a big believer in faith-based organizations in the fight against hunger. Members of Congress have recently recommended that Hall be appointed special envoy to Sudan to focus on ending the genocide in Darfur.

PC will not return to East Timor in 2006Volunteers serving in East Timor have safely left the country as a result of the recent civil unrest and government instability. Latest: The Peace Corps has informed us that at this time, the Peace Corps has no plans to re-enter the country in 2006. The Peace Corps recently sent a letter offering eligible volunteers the opportunity to reinstate their service in another country.

Chris Dodd considers run for the White HouseSenator Chris Dodd plans to spend the next six to eight months raising money and reaching out to Democrats around the country to gauge his viability as a candidate. Just how far Dodd can go depends largely on his ability to reach Democrats looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton. PCOL Comment: Dodd served as a Volunteer in the Dominican Republic and has been one of the strongest supporters of the Peace Corps in Congress.

Vasquez testifies before Senate CommitteeDirector Vasquez testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination as the new Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture replacing Tony Hall. He has been the third longest serving Peace Corps Director after Loret Ruppe Miller and Sargent Shriver. PCOL Comment: Read our thanks to Director Vasquez for his service to the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps stonewalls on FOIA requestThe Ashland Daily Tidings reports that Peace Corps has blocked their request for information on the Volkart case. "After the Tidings requested information pertaining to why Volkart was denied the position — on March 2 — the newspaper received a letter from the Peace Corps FOIA officer stating the requested information was protected under an exemption of the act." The Dayton Daily News had similar problems with FOIA requests for their award winning series on Volunteer Safety and Security.

PCOL readership increases 100%Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

History of the Peace CorpsPCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help.

RPCV admits to abuse while in Peace CorpsTimothy Ronald Obert has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor in Costa Rica while serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps has a zero tolerance policy for misconduct that violates the law or standards of conduct established by the Peace Corps," said Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez. Could inadequate screening have been partly to blame? Mr. Obert's resume, which he had submitted to the Peace Corps in support of his application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, showed that he had repeatedly sought and obtained positions working with underprivileged children. Read what RPCVs have to say about this case.

Why blurring the lines puts PCVs in dangerWhen the National Call to Service legislation was amended to include Peace Corps in December of 2002, this country had not yet invaded Iraq and was not in prolonged military engagement in the Middle East, as it is now. Read the story of how one volunteer spent three years in captivity from 1976 to 1980 as the hostage of a insurrection group in Colombia in Joanne Marie Roll's op-ed on why this legislation may put soldier/PCVs in the same kind of danger. Latest: Read the ongoing dialog on the subject.

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Story Source: Stirling Echoes Sentine

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Guatemala; Parks; Wildlife; Poaching

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